This invention relates to a process for producing sintered ferrous alloy products in powder metallurgy having high mechanical strength, toughness, heat resistance, wear resistance, and electromagnetic properties, as well as high dimensional accuracy and stability.
Production of precision parts by powder metallurgy has recently seen great advances because of its high economy resulting from the absence of the need of cutting and other machining operations and its potential for mass production. The process basically consists of placing a mixture of metal powders or alloy powders in a mold, pressing the mixture into a desired shape, and sintering the shaped mixture at elevated temperatures to provide a product having desired strength, wear resistance characteristics and electromagnetic properties. For a given material and forming density, the strength, toughness, electromagnetic and other properties of the sintered product depends upon whether successful sintering is achieved. If successful sintering is not effected, the desired characteristics mentioned above are not obtained. In addition, high dimensional accuracy is not achieved consistantly, subsequent pressing and other machining operations such as sizing are necessary for correcting the dimensions of the sintered product, and hence, the economy of powder metallurgy is reduced. In this sense, the sintering technique is a very important factor in powder metallurgy, and in particular, the control of temperature and atmosphere for sintering are most important since they directly affect the quality of the product produced by powder metallurgy.
One of the purposes of sintering is to bond metal particles thermally at a temperature lower than the melting point of the metal, and another is to diffuse the particles of a dissimilar metal. The two requirements that must be satisfied by any atmosphere for sintering are: (1) it removes the gas adsorbed on the surface of the metal particles and reduces the oxide on said surface; and (2) it prevents oxidation, carburization, and decarburization during sintering. Among the sintering atmospheres currently used in powder metallurgy are an endothermic modified gas, hydrogen gas, decomposed ammonia gas (cracked NH.sub.3) nitrogen gas, vacuum, and each has its own merits and demerits.